Recently, there is a drastic increase in the function and storage capacity mounted on small-sized devices such as mobile phones. However, there is less change in the form and input/output interface of the apparatus for securing the portability of the device. This is because screen area and button types are restricted by far greater for the small-sized device, such as the mobile phone, as compared to those of the general-purpose computer. Consequently, the small-sized device, such as the mobile phone, requires many scene-to-scene transitions in order to select and invoke a desired function as well as frequent scrolling of the scene in order to find out a desired file, thus involving a problem of taking time and labor in operation.
It is disclosed by, for example JP-A-2006-287556, that the user is allowed to set up a function without the repetition of troublesome menu selections by preferentially displaying a menu highly frequent to use upon selecting and invoking the function). In the mobile phone, user's use history is recorded to produce an operation screen with menu items highly frequent to use and setting information items by ignoring the hierarchical relationship of menus, thereby improving the usability for the user to establish a functional setting.
With a method to preferentially display a menu item highly frequent in use and setting information, operation burden can be relieved upon using an item the user usually uses frequently. However, the finally selected item, in many cases, relies upon the route up to displaying the relevant item instead of upon the use frequency of the item itself. This is because the user, in many cases, makes an operation by use of a route fixed to a certain extent when he/she invokes a predetermined item.
For example, in the case of invoking a mail function upon waiting on the mobile phone, it is often the case to finally invoke a scene for reading a reception mail. On the contrary, when invoked from a menu screen, it is often the case to invoke a scene for preparing an outgoing message. Thus, there are frequent cases that the finally invoked scene differs depending upon the route of scene-to-scene transition. In such a case, mere extraction of a item highly frequent in use des not lead to a full omission of user's operation time and labor in scene-to-scene transition on the mobile phone, requiring the improvement of usability still more.